Alexandra Cruz examines the relationship between indifference and obsession in her debut horror novel Compulsions. Xavier Andrieu, a writer overcome by indifference, seduces and manipulates a mentally ill artist into joining him on his path of self-destruction.

Andrieu is known to the world as a respected novelist; successful, creative, yet entirely detached from reality, he forms a relationship with a kindred spirit that reaches inconceivable extremes of insanity. Confessing his desires through the most demented forms of violence, Xavier revels in an existence that leaves no space for morality.